July 31, 2019 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Claude Bernard and Science
If Bernard’s experiments which were
primarily vivisections which in their very nature were shocking and ghastly
then his thoughts on science were revolutionary for his times.
To him science was not about known but what
was obscure and hidden.
Any authority, whether scholarly or
otherwise, ought to be taken with great skepticism and only experimental
observation should be the leading authority.
“When we meet a fact which contradicts a
prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when
they theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.”
In his 1865 book ‘An Introduction to the
Study of Experimental Medicine’ he describes the fundamental principles of
scientific method, experimental medicine and objectivity in scientific
observations that most doctors till date have not been able to grasp or
understand or to come to terms with.
He was a true scientist who took nothing
for granted, dismissed any old notions that did not have any experimental basis
and relied only on experimentation.
When even today most people find it
difficult to accept that there is nothing fundamentally different between a
living and non-living object (except for the complexity of multi-layered
organization) Bernard was prescient enough to proclaim that all living
creatures were bound by the same laws as inanimate matter.
He for one also was clear that science is a
constant play between theory and fact and between induction and deduction.
While mathematics is purely deductive
starting from axioms and postulates it is not the case with sciences specially
biological and medical science.
Induction to him was reasoning from the
particular to the general whereas deduction was reasoning from general to
particular and they needed to go hand in hand.
It is crucial that any general theory that
is arrived at by the method of observation and induction through a series of
theoretical deductions must be tested by specifically designed experiments.
Only the outcome of the experiments can
attest to the veracity of our proposed theories and if they do not pass the
test of experiments the theories – even the fondest ones – would have to be
abandoned.
Claude Bernard lived in the times of
Michael Faraday and perhaps he was to physiology and medicine what Faraday was to
the traditional hands-on physics.
Both were ardent experimentalists and
perhaps for this reason one can him Bernard the “Faraday of physiology and
medicine”.
Bernard also emphasized that it was to the
scientist to determine the causality of any natural phenomenon.
It is up to the scientist who has to find
the link of a phenomenon to its immediate cause by first observing it carefully
and then proposing a hypothesis.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
